


Break My Pride

by rubyboys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demons, F/F, Gen, Hell, Mild Horror, Mild Sexual Content, POV Second Person, Ruby!centric, a bit murder-y, mostly gen!fic, some minor background ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 16:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13574610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyboys/pseuds/rubyboys
Summary: You started out in England.Where she begins, and where she ends.





	Break My Pride

You started out in England.   
  
Memories from back then don’t come through cleanly; they’re all speckled with grit and dust, by now. But you don’t have to sift through memories anymore. You know where you started. You’ve told enough people--now, you just need to recite the words.  
  
So, you started out in England. Picture it: a small, redheaded orphan, working in the village to pass on messages from the priests at the big abbey the next town over. You pottered around quite happily, you knew everyone locally, you were the goodest little human there ever was--until something dirty and ungodly stole you away.  
  
It’s a pretty picture. It’s a great story. It’s a shame it’s not true.  
  
“You could earn as much as you fancy, with a mouth like that.” That was a priest. And, “Hmm, give it a few years, though, lovey--children don’t sell well round here.” That was a nun. And they wonder what unearthly thing it is that perverts humans in hell, twists them into demons. As if humans don’t have it in them from the get-go.  
  
You were paid in extras--milk that was starting to smell, bread too burnt to get a good profit, things like that. You didn’t use money. Everything you worked for was eaten by nightfall, and you started all over again the next day. And you worked damn hard, the way kids do, when they need food. Sadly. Dutifully. Without question. You trudged miles uphill from abbey to home and back again, in your flimsy soft shoes. And it hurt your feet and it hurt your knees, and sometimes the wind was so cold and loud and angry that it took you twice as long to get anywhere, but you did it. It was just what you did.  
  
You needed food for Avice.  
  
Oh. God. Avice. You remember her name. Your own? Of course not. You don’t know where it got to; you lost it, somewhere, over the years, with everything else that once made you human. But you can’t really forget her.  
  
As much as you try.  
  
~  
  
In Hell, Lilith vivisected you.  
  
Mind and body, until you were entirely deconstructed and barely human. You were her plaything, and you gave everything over to Lilith. Every inch of your rosy, freckled skin--you peeled it away and presented it up like a trophy, your hope visible even in your beetle-black eyes. And every day, Lilith would eat you up, again and again, until there was nothing left, and you had to start over.  
  
It was love. You know this, because Lilith told you so. And there were times, in the early days (years, decades), that you thought, _no, no, this is just hunger,_ but she devoured you so beautifully that, as time passed, you learned that yeah, no, that _is_ what love is. It hurts like nothing else, but it’s love.  
  
Anyway. It was better than being human. It was better than thinking about Avice.  
  
There were other people in Hell. You didn’t know they were people; they didn’t wear pretty human bodies the way Lilith chose to. She was always so thoughtful. No, you thought they were monsters. Of course you did. They swarmed from place to place, leering at you hungrily, and it took you time to realise that those clicking, gooey maws were smiles.  
  
“They were humans, once,” Lilith murmured, running her fingers over and around your jaw. “Like you.”  
  
(At the time, there was too much ambiguity there for little, sad, vicious you to break it down. You got it, though, later. You’re not sure at what point you became a monster too.)  
  
And then, some time later (it blurs together, in Hell; time shifts and slides weirdly), you were handed on, from Lilith’s consort to Azazel’s arsenal. Lilith didn’t so much give you to Azazel as Azazel decided one day that he wanted Lilith’s shiny new toy, and took you.  
  
Azazel, as you learned, was the Big Boss Man of Hell. The first time you saw him, he was obscured by the fall of Lilith’s hair over your face; his strange face, across the room, was framed by the soft crook of Lilith’s elbow and forearm. He passed by the room plenty, beaming at you both, and he was memorable: he was one of the few monsters who liked to look a little more human. Not completely human, but moreso than many. Maybe it was something about his complexion? Azazel looked as though someone had taken a picture of a human, and given it to a child to colour in. He was very thin, almost skeletal, with a large, pronounced jawline. He liked to wear suits in baby pink or powder blue; whatever colour he chose would horribly offset his pale, greenish green, and his horsey, yellow teeth. They matched his searing yellow eyes, and weak white hair.  
  
You knew it was all over when, once, he paused outside the room, visible through the bars, and tilted his head, smiling, looking thoughtful. You were poised in Lilith’s arms for whatever lovely, sensual torture she had planned, when she went still, and murmured, “Stay still. Don’t turn around.”  
  
You lasted barely any time under his command. He was not kind, or gentle, and he did not touch you like a lover. He didn’t even really touch you. He just manoeuvred you into position and watched you go off. And you were not allowed to see Lilith anymore.  
  
So you got out.  
  
And god, god, _god_ , you didn’t want to. You wanted to stay, and find your way back to Lilith, and cosy up nicely in her abattoir. But everything was different, now; every moment marked by the sulphuric stink of Azazel’s in your periphery, every thought you had doubling back worriedly, checking _is that okay_ and _is he gonna be angry with me_ and _i didn’t mean to think that_. You were a wretched little thing, back then. So spoiled. So coddled.  
  
You made the right choice, though. It was better to run than to stay.  
  
You would’ve changed down there.  
  
Not that Azazel would’ve taken away your humanity--you lost that within seconds of meeting Lilith, you let her strip you of that, and it was _wonderful_. It was liberating. You’ve never needed your humanity to survive; that’s never been the problem. But, if you stayed in Hell, weaponised, and under the command of a demon, you would’ve forgotten what it was like to be human.  
  
And there was a chance, even if only infinitesimale, there was a chance you could find Avice.

~

So you got out.

You misjudged time. Obviously. (Time works differently in Hell. Why did you have hope?) Avice was long dead by the time you crawled out. It would’ve been decades, at least.

It wasn’t clear, at first, because, wherever you crawled out, you didn’t land in England. The accents and the language were familiar, but the culture was intense and dry and so, so, boringly _human_ . People didn’t worship God the way you were familiar with from your time alive, and they definitely didn’t worship Lucifer. Even if your beliefs _had_ aligned, you’d forgotten what it was like to be around people.

You tried to spend some time in a little village, but it didn’t go so well. At least, not for the locals. They didn’t take kindly to the sight of you, entrenched in dirt and death, limping, black-eyed, and wearing one of their corpses, freshly buried. The people formed a mob, and they screamed so goddamn loudly.

So you had to get rid of them.

It took forever. It was your first mass-slaughter. It’s funny, in a way. The idea of you: a young, hesitant demon, spattered in blood. It comes so naturally, now.

You adjusted to humanity ( _ha_ ), alone, in the dead village, just for a few days. You were learning what it was like to be a demon on earth. In Hell, you manifested differently, you _looked_ different--but up here, you looked like nothing, just thin dusky smoke, and you couldn’t do anything without funnelling down the throat of a human, switching their body back on, and using it as a kind of vessel. It took forever to learn to make the body move properly; at first, all you could do was lurch around, and breathing was a conscious choice. It was exhausting. With all your energy focused on making yourself breathe and move and actually tick over, you missed little things like blinking and digesting. You went through, maybe, half the bodies in the village until you figured out how to make brain and body work as one.

As a learning curve, it was a good one. Not that you had a choice, but practising on corpses made you stronger than most vagrant demons scuttling around on earth. By the time you realised that you could just use an already-living body, you had quite a bit of self-control and discipline.

And this meant that you didn’t slaughter everyone you met, everywhere you went. And that meant that you didn’t get caught.

You didn’t want to get caught, and you didn’t even want to cause much trouble. It was enough to just be out of Hell. You didn’t exactly have a plan. And it was becoming clear that you couldn’t go back to being human. You kept moving, on through villages, through towns, through cities, and, god, you repelled life. You could play nice, but children stared at you, confused, adults got angry, would whisper to one another about you, because something about you was… something. Maybe the humans around you didn’t know what was wrong with you, why you moved a little too smoothly, or even why you didn’t seem to know or understand local slang or history, but they knew something was _wrong_ . Like Azazel, you were a good approximation of human, but still _not quite_.

The rejection hurt, anyway. But your chance to be human was long-gone. So you kept your head down, and you kept moving. You picked up some small bits and pieces of magic--what passed for magic, on earth, anyway. It helped you get by.

(Witches were always pretty stubborn, pretty close-lipped about their craft. The only way to learn anything was to forego the witch entirely, and steal whatever instructive books and papers she had. You had to kill them quietly, but you were gentle, each time, so gentle. Between wine, long kisses, aching apologies, and a knife to the belly, the murder looked almost totally human. It was the smell that gave you away, that acrid, demon stench, but you took off straight away each time, so it didn’t matter.)

You kept an ear out for any rumours of Hell, of Azazel’s growing army, and of Lilith. Not that you could go back, not that things could ever be the same again, but, holy hell, you missed Lilith. Holding those witches, dying, in their beds, touching them and kissing them and saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,”--each one just made you miss her more. You listened out for her, all the time. You thought of her, all the time.

It didn’t matter. You never heard anything.

~

If you had found her--Avice, of course--you’re not sure what you would’ve done.

Maybe you would have taken her in, the way Lilith took you in. Given her that special breed of love you learned from Lilith. Avice needed love, and you sure as hell didn’t give it to her--at least, not in any tangible way she could understand. You kept her fed, and argued for her shelter. But yeah, child-you didn’t do what good big sisters do. You didn’t play, or tease, or cuddle, or spend any measure of time with her beyond what was necessary to make sure she was eating and sleeping well. She loved you regardless. She loved you so, so much. Maybe, if you’d found her, once you’d escaped Hell, you would’ve returned that love. And it would’ve been horrible, and all-consuming, and it would tear her to pieces and put her back again in the worst way possible, but it would’ve been love.

But, in another reality, that’s not what you would’ve done. You would’ve found her, and you would’ve killed her. And you would’ve told yourself it was a mercy killing, but it would not have been. It would’ve been a vicious, and loveless murder. Because you’re a demon, and you are not capable of love or mercy. Get it into your head. You just like to tie up loose ends.

~

In the wild, wild west, you stood on a street corner, and saw a redheaded angel with angry, angry eyes. Angels didn’t leave Heaven for anything minor. Especially not that militant asshole.

If she got you, if she even saw you, she could do anything she wanted. She could drag you back down to Hell where you belonged. But angels aren’t kind like that. They reek of power, so much more than you, or any demon you’ve ever met. She could’ve stuck out her tongue and executed you, just for fun, and you would simply cease to exist.

Anna found your eyes across the busy street, and you said _screw it, screw Lilith, screw Avice,_ and you goddamn ran.

You kept running.

You met a demon who told you _no, no, you don’t get it. The whole point is you leave it all behind._ You took your last shreds of humanity and you scrubbed them underfoot into the dirt, and watched Meg’s wild, wild ride.

At the time, Meg wasn’t Meg. She was Lou, and then Margaret, Irving, Geraldo, Sookie, and Wendy. She liked cities, where she could crash through like horses out of control, going on wild sprees with any quirky weapon of choice--before dumping the poor meatsuit outside a sheriff’s station and moving onto her next pretty body, her next city, her next power trip.

She swept the world up in her path, leaving rubble and sticks in her wake--and you crawling behind her.

You. Not you. Whoever Meg told you to be.

~

Avice was fair, and sweet, but her body was different, moved differently. She learned things too slowly. She didn’t speak until she was five, and didn’t walk until even later. Mum died giving birth to her, and then Dad died a few weeks after. With the warping of her limbs and the redness of her hair, she was an easy target for the local boys.

They would follow you home, desperate to see the witch you were hiding upstairs.

But you got by. A few cuts and bruises here and there. Pushed a vicious, burly boy back into a ditch so jagged he lost his arm. You survived. You worked. You fed Avice.

But things happened. Scary things. Men with horrible hands, and howling, wicked laughs, and Avice got outside and she was confused and angry and scared. You can see the picture of it so clearly: her cheeks pink from the cold, her eyes bright with wild tears, standing in the snow, and calling your name. She called your name, whatever it was, again and again, until her voice was slurred and hoarse, too confused to move in any one direction, and too oblivious to know to back away from the approaching men. They took in her curled back and bent legs and red hair, and screamed terrible, terrible things at her. Least of all that she was a witch.

It was the last you saw of her. You backed away, beyond the brothel, your paper-thin shoes crunching in the black snow, and didn’t stop until you found yourself at a crossroads, and wished and wished to die.

~

They found you.

Meg wasn’t vigilant enough (like she was vigilant _at all_ ). Hell didn’t even have to sniff you out; with the amount of deaths you left behind, all of them dirty and dark, you may as well have planted a series of massive fluorescent signs with the words _ROGUE DEMONS HERE, COME GET US_.

Being dragged back into Hell isn’t a feeling you’re desperate to remember, but you remember the feeling of shock at the fact that it was literal. Someone down there sent their feelers up, latched onto your by your ankles, fumbled horrifically through the skin of your meatsuit and dug its hooks into your very being. It pulled you down, awfully, inexorably, through the flesh of the earth, into the hot, ugly realm beneath. Every pebble, coffin and layer of rock bruised you on the way down, nudging and poking and itching at you, until finally you fell, and landed, and met your makers.

Fantastic, you thought. Here you were again. A target for the full force of any number of enraged, patriotic demons.

But, as it turned out, you got lucky. Because these guys weren’t angry; they were impressed. _Centuries_ , they marvelled. _You’ve evaded us for centuries. You’re just a normal beetle-eye! How did you do it?_

So they didn’t punish you. They gave you a job to do.

~

You’ve been watching over the bloodline since the 40s, and watching over Sam since the 80s. The dad kept him hard to track at first, but you got used to the patterns. You went wherever they went. Teacher, librarian, bully, crush. You’ve been talking to Sam his entire life.

It’s what Azazel told you to do. You don’t ask questions; you keep your head down and keep moving and you hide. It’s what you’re good at.

You don’t hear anything from Lilith.

In second grade, you gave him an A on his maths test, called him a clever kid, and kind of wanted to throw up in your mouth when that little pudgy face beamed up at you.

In fifth grade, you passed him notes, stuck gum in his hair, and called him a whiny little nerd.

In seventh grade, you pushed him over, and his pesky-ass brother pushed your big spotty meatsuit up against a wall and damn near screamed in its (your) face. Angry kid. Lots of fun.

In eleventh grade, you set up camp as librarian for a good six months before you got bored (and, consequently, angry--and, consequently, slaughtered half the staff in protest). You gave Sam a book on teenage runaways, and told him that he could always come to you for advice.

You thought it was a pretty lousy gig, at first. It rankled like a punishment, but, with every report that had you stalking through Hell to find Azazel and give him the latest, you realised that, hey, maybe this is a pretty enviable position. Babysitting a kid who may or may not be important, because Azazel wasn’t sure yet--it doesn’t sound like a whale of a time. But the younger beetle-eyes stare at you hungrily, admiringly, like you’re something special, and the more established demons look away from you haughtily. They can’t decide whether they’re better than you or not. They followed the rules and served in Hell. You did the unthinkable. You left. Cowards shouldn’t get rewarded, but you’re the boss guy’s number one.

John nearly caught you--so many times, you lost count. You got the idea that, maybe, you could be the reason they kept moving, kept on running. If, maybe, John could sense you, somehow. But, then again, John fancied himself some kind of demon-hunter, but he was a toddler with a gun, shooting at anything and everything that gave off the impression of evil.

It was a good idea, though. You decided to lead John and his boys, taking them from city to city, town to town, rural shithole to rural shithole. It was easier to construct interesting massacres (and way, way more fun) than trailing awkwardly behind a hapless hunter and his two sad-faced kids. You took on names like you took bodies, you preferred girls over boys, and you slashed throats the way you ate food: for play, rather than out of necessity, a healthy three times a day.

Sam grew up, and went to college, and Azazel demanded you take on a more hands-on approach. Not really your style, but you had reasons for agreeing to it.

Maybe, it was a little superficial (but hey, you’re dead, who cares?). Felt like you’d blinked, and that annoying, fat kid who Might Be Important One Day was suddenly a long-legged, pretty thing, with big puppy dog eyes and a shy smile. You could see yourself taking a more hands-on approach with this guy.

It was a little out of frustration, too. And it was a little out of nostalgia. You hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be human. You hadn’t forgotten one bit. It could’ve been nice to try it again.

You found a stunning, blonde thing to ride around in. For all intents and purposes, you became Jess Moore. You were Sam’s lover for two whole fucking years, a real person for two whole fucking years, stationed on earth to be a human and do human things for two whole fucking years--until Azazel got bored.

It wasn’t bad, feigning at being human. It wasn’t bad at all.

Sam never realised. Or maybe he’d stood in your wake for so many years that he couldn’t sense you anymore, didn’t realise that you was _off_ , that you stank of sulphur. Or maybe he did figure something out, but he just wanted to be happy.

Anyway. Whatever. It’s fine now.

Azazel got bored and ripped you back down into Hell, and used your lovely meatsuit to burn some sense into the Winchester boys. Let them know that a war was coming. Force them into battle mode. Right where he wanted them.

Later, when Sam let you get close, you knew which buttons to push, and the two of you fell into the same rhythm of things. You knew his mind, you knew his childhood, you knew his body.

You knew his greatest weakness.

Only problem was that his greatest weakness knew you right back, and stabbed you at the very mouth of Hell with your own goddamned knife.

~

In Purgatory, you drift and wander.

You don’t look like one thing or another, necessarily. Some days, you glitch in and out of the shape of some of your favourite meatsuits, the ones that almost felt like they belonged to you. On other days, you can see bits and pieces of your first face in the reflection in the large, black lakes. It might be Avice, though. She and you had the same face, didn’t you? It was so long ago. So many lifetimes ago. So many deaths.

Mostly, though, you waft, formless, watching the chaos and death below.

You’ve escaped Hell before; you’ll figure out how to escape this ugly realm. There’ll be a way out; either something already here, or a weak spot in which you can rip a nice little doorway. The thing is, god.

You’re just so tired.

Yeah, you’ve got a list of names. You could eat the heart out of Dean Winchester, make him scared and furious the way he made you. You could storm back into Hell and tear the place down, crumble the remnants of Azazel’s army, lock Lucifer up even tighter, find Lilith and make her goddamned pay for the way she loved you and lost you, abandoned you, replaced you. You could hunt through your very own bloodline; hey, you’ve got practise. Maybe you’ll find the closest thing to a descendent of Avice, and have some fun.

But god, god, god. You’re so tired.

You blur between the gray, gray sky, and the stark shapes of the land. You’re not quite one thing, sometimes barely even that. It’s the whole point of this place, is to wear at your soul, grind away at it as best as it can until there’s barely anything left to constitute a person. It’s found your perfect limbo; it’s given you no form, no friends, no foes. It’s given you a flat, shapeless existence, and then it’s said, _hey, there’s a way to get out, if you still want to_. And, strangely, you don’t want to. Strangely, you find it peaceful.

Echoes of memories blow your way in the wind, sometimes, toying with your will. Can you remember what it felt like to be loved by a human? Can you remember what it felt like to lay, half-eaten and in love, in Lilith’s arms? Can you remember the hurt and toil of a day’s work to feed your sister, who you loved so, horribly, much? The answer is no. You only have the outlines of these memories, now.

You only have the outline of yourself.

It’s fine. You’ve been an approximation of a person for a very long time now. Maybe even longer than you think. Let it all drift away from you. You don’t need it, here.

Maybe, for now, you’ll just be.


End file.
